Edward H. Bennett Collection
A preliminary online exhibit on the planner and architect Edward H. Bennett highlights new information about him, his work, and the 1909 Plan of Chicago he co-authored with Daniel H. Burnham.
A finding aid, still in development in May 2010, more systematically offers a guide to the various components of the collection.
These were/are being prepared following the donation in November 2008 of newly discovered material held back by Bennett when he donated much of his professional archives to the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in 1953, the year before he died. His son and only child, Edward H.Bennett, Jr., later donated more material to the AIC, but did not locate among family papers and/or did not transfer to the AIC a significant group of related images, correspondence, etc. But as the centennial of the 1909 Plan of Chicago approached, Edward H. Bennett III, to whom the remainder of the archive had been transfered in 2002, donated with his spouse Marcia O. Bennett this collection. Based on what was available at the AIC and was known to the planner's son in the 1970s, the late architectural historian Joan E. Draper wrote a short biographical study of Bennett and his work, published by the AIC in 1982, in which she drew the conclusion that Bennett's contribution to the 1909 Plan and after essentially was that of a follower of Burnham's initiatives. The newly uncovered collection of things held back by Bennett for their sensitivity and as personal mementoes changes this profile of Bennett's role in the Plan process and in subsequent developments.
Athur H. Miller
May 26, 2010